Saka Light Cavalry

Wednesday, 10 February 2016

Curtgeld Otto Schindler.

The theme for this years Analogue Painting Challenge is risk takers and after a few ideas that were bouncing around as possible Cath came up with Otto Schindler. Immediately I was thinking of the film and it did not take long to come up with a firm idea of what I wanted to do. Whilst Schindler never came into contact with the girl in the red coat it struck me that it would make for a iconic piece, Doing it in greyscale both fitted the piece and Curt's own interest.

All I needed was the figures, after both Cath and myself had trolled the net it was apparent that I would have to do a bit of work as no supplier seemed to do perfect figures but with little work I could have the girl. Schindler would take a bit more effort.

I finally found a figure in Dixon's gangster range that was mostly what I wanted. I had to remove the pistol from his hand and drill out the hand as well as lower the arm so he would look like he is reaching out to the girl.

The last thing was to cut off the cloth cap and replace with a hat similar to one that Schindler is seen wearing in the film. Originally I was going to have her running away from Schindler but in the end I wanted to try and give the imprecision that they were reaching over a impossible gulf.

Next up it was working out which greys to use for which part. I bought a further four greys for the project though I think I just used the three on this model. The girl had to have the red coat but all the rest would be greyscale and after looking at a lot of images from the film I finally set myself the look I wanted. In fact the final piece actually comes from a mix of several different images so I don't owe the finished figure to any one image.

Not that the building did not have it's issues, cutting off the cloth cap cost me the back of his head. Fortunately I was able rebuild the hair with some modelling putty. I also had doubts about the hat, originally it looked too small but once painted looked OK.

The girl was really simple as she has a lot less shades to work with. The red in reality is a little less intense than on these images.

I was going to add snow to the girls side of the base but in the end went for barren ground with no grass whilst adding the splash of colour on Schindlers side of the base. Again this was to try and project the idea of being worlds apart and I am really happy with how it came out.